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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27875950">Six for Gold</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishafel/pseuds/ishafel'>ishafel</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Same Old Story [6]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Sherlock (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alpha/Omega, Alternate Universe, Gen, M/M, Mpreg, Post-Mpreg, Post-Reichenbach</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 14:39:50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,646</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27875950</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishafel/pseuds/ishafel</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Having the baby is easier than being shot.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Sebastian Moran/John Watson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Same Old Story [6]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/414991</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Six for Gold</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It might only be five minutes, but it feels like years before the next round of gunfire starts.  Outside, this time.  There should be three men left.  Faisal outside, and Ali and Davide inside.  “No big deal,” Seb tells the baby.  Situation:  he still has Ahmed’s Makarov PMM, which is a seriously good gun, and seven rounds of the twelve round clip left.  Rafi Khan is alive, although probably not for much longer if he doesn’t get the sucking bullet wound in his throat repaired pretty quickly.  The warhead in the stables is-- not secure, and presumably Mycroft doesn’t know exists.  </p><p>He’s mostly naked, and he’s still wearing Yakalb’s fucking collar, and he’s been shot, which is probaby not great for the baby.  So Seb’s analysis of the situation is that the less he thinks about the situation, the better.</p><p>There are footsteps in the hall.  A door slams.  Ali or Davide, or both.  Four more shots.  There’s the creak of the big carved front door opening, for the first time since Seb’s been in this house.  Boots in the hall, more than one person.  “Moran?  Call out.”  Katie’s voice.  This is his team.  His team, all the way from London, coming for him.</p><p>“Moran here,” he yells as strongly as he can.  “It’s the second door on the left.  The door’s blocked, you’re going to have to come through the window.  Three hostiles, two dead and one dying.  There are six women in the back of the house in the rooms opening off the inner courtyard.  I’m not sure if any of them are armed.”</p><p>“On it,” someone else says.  The windows are covered with ornate iron screens, no glass. The sky outside is silver, the sun not yet up.  Seb has been in Syria for thirty-eight days.  He can’t wait to go home.  </p><p>After a minute someone kicks one of the screens in and then slithers into the room.  Seb recognizes Anthony, also from the London team.  “Christ, am I glad to see you lot,” he says and watches as Anthony takes things in.  The two dead men on the floor, and the third dying, and the blood pooling on the inlaid parquet floor.  And Seb, with his swollen belly and swelling face and his hand pressed to the hole in his shoulder.  It had never been a secret that he was an omega, but it hadn’t been obvious either.  Most of them had been able to ignore it, but there was no ignoring it now.</p><p>When Anthony hesitates, he says, “Smith.  I need you to give me a hand up and then drag this desk out of the way and move that body and open the fucking door.”  Of course they sent the newest man on the team, probably because he’s the only one small enough to have fit through the window apart from Katie herself.</p><p>Relieved of the burden of deciding what to do next, Anthony does manage.  It’s excruciating getting up, but Seb doesn’t make a sound.  Bad enough he’s clearly omega; he can’t afford to act like one, too.</p><p>Anthony helps him drape the ruins of his robes around himself and he leans against the wall while they triage Rafi Khan and rush him out.  He’s probably the only one alive who knows the exact provenance of the nuke, but Seb still kind of hopes he dies.</p><p>As they carry Shakur out, there is a wail from the back of the house, and then another from the courtyard.  The omega and beta women who depended on him-- whose difficult lives are likely made even worse by his capture.  His mother, who carried him to term despite long odds, and raised him to be a good little genocidal maniac, and possibly even loved him.</p><p>After that they start on Seb.  He closes his eyes and turns his head away for the worst of it, but he’s quiet, and when he answers Katie’s questions his voice is fairly steady.  Half an hour later they’re in a helicopter, the first leg of the trip back to England.  </p><p>They offload him in Baghdad for treatment, and when they wheel him into the base hospital on a gurney his sister and Katie and Mycroft Holmes are waiting for him, each looking grimmer than the last.  Seb had carried Fleur’s baby into a warzone, and then got shot; he’d lied to Katie for months about his pregnancy, at least by omission; he guesses Mycroft always looks that way.</p><p>Fleur steps forward first.  She looks taller from this angle, and every inch the general in dusty combat dress and boots.  “The baby’s okay,” Seb says quickly, before she has to ask.  “I felt him moving, and they checked his heartbeat.”</p><p>“You idiot,” his sister says.  “You let them send you undercover into Damascus, into the house of the most dangerous man in Syria, weaponless--  Seb, he goes through omegas like a knife through butter-- you could have been raped, you could have been killed, you could have been buried in an unmarked grave in the desert--.”</p><p>Mycroft stirs, but it’s Katie who interrupts.  “Sir, what your brother volunteered to do was extraordinarily brave.”  Despite himself Seb grimaces a little at the implied, knowing what’s coming even before she says it.  “Of course it was a terrible thing to ask of an omega, but--.”  </p><p>“Jesus Christ.”  Fleur turns on her.  She might not always have agreed with his choices, but even when they were children she’d defended him, no matter what.   “He was a soldier for twenty years and a full colonel.  His fucking courage isn’t in question, Commander, only his brains.”</p><p>“Hey,” Seb says, and reaches for her hand with his good arm.  It turns out to be a mistake; the banked pain in his shoulder flares into agony.  As much as it sucks, it gets him out of there.  Twenty minutes later they push him into surgery.</p><p>When he wakes up, John Watson is half asleep in the chair next to him.  His shoulder’s strapped and his arm’s in a sling and there’s a needle in the back of his free hand that’s probably responsible for the floating feeling that’s replaced the throbbing.  “Hi,” he says, and it comes out small and apologetic, like the fuckup he feels like.</p><p>“Hello,” Watson says, and gets up and limps over.  He looks tired and a little rumpled, but his eyes are kind and warm.  He’s always been decent, but he’s always been a little distant, too.</p><p>The distance is gone, as he looks down at Seb.  Like an alpha looking down at his omega.  </p><p>“I’m sorry,” Seb says, and he is sorry.  Mostly sorry he’s been caught once again doing something Watson won’t approve of.  Maybe it says something important about him that his only real lasting adult relationship was with a mass-murdering sociopath.  </p><p>To his surprise, Watson shakes his head.  “Sorry for what?  For saving hundreds of thousands of lives by going undercover as someone no one else in Britain could have managed?”  He smiles, and it smoothes some of the tiredness away.</p><p>“Sorry for getting shot, at any rate.”   He manages, carefully, to touch his stomach, and is reassured by the taut roundness.  “Hang in there, kid.”</p><p>“He’s fine,” Watson says at once.  “Strong and healthy.”</p><p>“Good,” Seb says, but he takes his hand away.  Not his baby, and he isn’t, won’t, let himself think of it that way.</p><p>“You could have told me,” Watson says, very quietly.  “About all of this-- the baby, and the mission.  I know I’m not your alpha, I know we aren’t-- we haven’t-- we aren’t really even friends.  But I’m Isobel’s father.  If you’re going to do something this mad, I should know.”</p><p>Seb isn’t exactly in shape to have this fight.  Whatever they gave him-- and Christ he hopes they haven’t given him opiates, when it clearly says never again in his official medical record-- he feels half drunk.  “You don’t want to be my alpha,” he says.  “No one’s ever wanted to.  It’s fine.”  </p><p>“You don’t want an alpha,” Watson says, looking startled. </p><p>Seb touches his throat.  The collar’s gone.  “You don’t know what I want.  You’ve never fucking asked me what I want.”</p><p>Watson’s jaw tightens.  “Let’s not do this now, Sebastian.”</p><p>No one but his father and Jim ever called Seb <i>Sebastian</i>, and usually only then because he was in trouble.  It makes him feel like an omega, small and guilty and stupid.</p><p>“Right,” he says, and closes his eyes and pretends to go to sleep.</p><p>London is a shock, cold and dark and dreary even in June, and Seb hates it the way he’d just been hating the hot bright sun of Damascus.  Isobel has grown while he is gone, and alternates between being entirely too independent and clinging desperately to Seb.  And Seb can’t pick her up or hold her in his lap or sit on the floor with her, can’t do much of anything those first weeks but sleep and eat and do his p.t.  </p><p>By the time he feels human again, he’s too pregnant to do much of anything.  They waddle to the park, they waddle to the shops, they waddle to tea with Fleur and Peter.  Seb is theoretically on medical leave, assuming he’s not just going to be forceably retired, because it’s going to be pretty damn hard to pretend he’s not an omega now that his team saw him mostly naked.  He saw the look on Katie’s face in the hospital in Baghdad; he knew that look.  That was how an alpha looked at you when they thought you were nothing but a hole that babies came out of.  She might take him back but she’ll never order him into danger again.</p><p>Seb’s spent his whole life redefining the word omega.  He won’t go back, no matter what.  </p><p>He dreams sometimes of the dead girl in Damascus, her dark staring eyes in her white face and the blood pooling between her legs beneath the mound of her belly.  She wasn’t even an omega male, only a child born in the wrong country, the wrong religion, the wrong time.  He dreams of the bus explosion in Kabul, the massacre in the Balkans, the IEDs in Mosul.   </p><p>He wants to take something to make it stop, but there’s no one he trusts to prescribe it.  Watson is cool, distant, and polite, Mycroft Holmes seems to have cut him loose, and his team bring him cake and DVDs on the weekends and won’t look him in the eyes when they talk to him.  No one asks him about the baby except Fleur and Peter.  Once he’s debriefed, no one asks him about Damascus.</p><p>Jim wouldn’t have asked, either, but he would have given Seb something else to think about.<br/>The baby comes in the middle of the summer, unexpectedly.  His due date is still a month away, and Seb’s in Tesco’s with Isobel, pushing a cart full of frozen pizzas and dinosaur shaped nuggets because that’s all she’ll eat at the moment.  He reaches for a box of frozen ices and there’s a sudden sharp pain he’d almost forgotten but recognizes instantly.  </p><p>“Motherfucker,” he says, which is a mistake because now Isobel is going to repeat it constantly.  An old woman in a pink housedress shoots him an extremely nasty look, and Seb returns it with interest.  He hasn’t gotten anything fresh, but he plods toward the front anyway.  Either the baby will come and it will be Watson’s problem, or they can all eat frozen nuggets and Indian takeaway for the week.  </p><p>He’s still in the checkout line when the pain hits a second time.  He’d been promised-- or warned-- that second babies came more quickly, but he hadn’t entirely believed it.  He believes it  now.  His labor with Isobel had taken days, and it had been hours before he’d even been sure anything was happening.</p><p>This baby feels like he’s coming, whether or not Seb is ready for him.  Seb abandons his trolley full of groceries and pulls Isobel out of the shop into the street and flags down a taxi.  The driver is older, Pakistani maybe, a beta who looks at Seb with soft, worried eyes.  Seb leans against the door and tries not to panic, aware of Isobel tense in the seat beside him.  </p><p>He texts Fleur even though he knows she’s still out of the country, and then Peter, who as a vicar is probably in church at this hour on a Sunday, Mrs. Hudson, also possibly in church; and then finally Watson, who is barely speaking to him and possibly at work or possibly has fucked off with Sherlock detecting something but almost certainly is not in a church.</p><p>Watson is the only one who pings him back, of course.  “Will get your suitcase &amp; meet at hospital,” he texts in response, and then a minute later, “Good luck.”</p><p>Seb meets the driver’s eyes in the mirror and tries to smile like a man who is definitely not going to give birth in a cab.  </p><p>He doesn’t have the baby in the cab.  The driver carries Isobel into the lobby for him, and stands waiting awkwardly until Seb musters enough Punjabi to reassure him that he has an alpha coming for him.  He fills out the forms, holding onto the counter and breathing through the contractions.  He hands over Isobel to Watson, takes his duffel, and is waddling toward his room when his water breaks.</p><p>After that things happen very fast. One minute he’s standing in a puddle in the middle of the hallway, and the next he’s in a bed with a doctor between his legs, trying not to push until he’s given the all-clear.  And then there’s an hour and a half of agony, and the copper taste of blood in his mouth he remembers from Damascus and from Isobel’s birth in Scotland and from a dozen different battlefields, a hundred ambushes and bombings and massacres and tragedies.</p><p>He never does get the epidural.  He doesn’t have the baby alone, at least; there’s none of the terror there was with Isobel that he will die and the baby will die with him, even if he can’t help but wish someone besides his brother-in-law was there to hold his hand.  And afterward they take the baby away, and the nurses help him clean up.</p><p>Seb is almost asleep by the time they bring it back, Peter trailing after the bassinet, looking half thrilled and half shell-shocked.  “He’s so small,” he says, touching the tiny fingers, “I can’t believe he’s here, and Fleur isn’t.”</p><p>The baby is small, but healthy.  Seb watches as Peter fumbles his shirt undone and sets it-- sets him-- to his breast.  They’ve given him a hormone injection to bring on his milk, and Seb sees how his face changes when the baby latches on.  His own breasts ache, but he’s had an injection as well; they’ll dry up soon.  He’d thought he’d feel something when they took the baby, sorrow or jealousy or just a general sense of loss, but mostly he feels tired and a little irritated at Peter for keeping him awake, at Fleur for being away, at Watson for-- what, not wanting any part of Seb’s shitshow?  </p><p>Seb misses Jim again, suddenly and fiercely, and not only the good parts.  Jim had hurt him sometimes, scared him sometimes, crossed every line Seb ever drew and some he’d never thought to draw-- but his being mad had made Seb be sane, had kept the hole in the middle of Seb from caving in when the army had taken away everything that made him himself.</p><p>He has Isobel now.  He has his job, which he is good at, and sometimes loves.  He will make it be enough.  He has to.</p>
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